The Land of Fire in Flames
by Funperson
Summary: Not getting a summary till the project is done, there will be no spoilers.


~The Land of Fire in Flames~

With the help of Killer Words I am proud to bring you my first Noir Mystery Crime story, and it took us nearly forever to remove all the holes in the plot, and all the faulty plot devices, and with several days of work we finally made a way to work the story together. And to make it all better for you we even took our time to double our facts and check everything out and make sure the entire thing works out and not to ruin the story but you have to pay attention, just look closely. And I hope you enjoy my loyal readers.

_Chapter 1: The Spark that Started it all_

[I'm coming to your house to pick you up around 10:00... be ready and look nice we are going out with TenTen and Hinata be ready! X Sakura X] The note was taunting Ino since she got it, but at 9:45 she was more than ready to leave dressed in a fancy purple dress, which showed off her stomach and back, the entire thing goes down her right leg form fitting to her sensual form, diagonal cut towards her upper thigh on her left leg. Her purple high heels bore 2 inch heels which made her overall appearance to be taller and pushed her breasts and rump into better sight of view. She thought the overall appearance was more acceptable than her normal work clothes. But there was finally a knock on the door and Sakura walked in... her usual big forehead dressed by her new shoulder length pink hair which grazed upon her red cocktail dress with the X spaghetti back straps which showed off her shoulders and neck. Ino noticed that the dress barely came up to her thighs and made her look a lot taller. Her heels were maybe a inch at most, definitely increasing her height... but she looked a lot nicer than normal and even Ino had to stop and stare.

"Well, I'm guessing your ready... So are you ready to head out I have Hinata waiting downstairs and we still have to pick up TenTen so I suggest we go like now okay?" Sakura was in way to much of a rush, but Ino understood; she hurried along out the door towards the street; she remembered she had to lock up, she slid the Yamanaca flower shop sign door closed and slid the lock before turning to leave.

-30 minute times later-

Inside the shop a closed lotus flower spreads its petals revealing a beautiful flower, and in its pollen center is a small flame, the fire slowly spreads and opens like the flower before it, catching more flowers on fire, then the fire spreads to more flowers around it... soon the fire moves below the flowers catching their respective tables ablaze. Not to much longer after that the entire shop is ablaze in no time, the fire grows and spreads catching the apartment over the shop in a giant lotus flower of fire which blooms and pops into a pillar of fire which burns the family house above the shop down onto the shop. The warm embers spread blazing flames upwards which dance across the night sky. The yellows and oranges start to glow against the buildings around the shop. The fire spreads and expands to the street and stops where it climbs again... A scream and then nothing but a burning building which glows and flicks, dances, and illuminates the star light sky. The flaming lotus closes up and shrinks back down leaving a single lotus flower in full bloom.

~5 hours later~

A dimly lit room was glistened by sunlight... the dusk was deeply caked on every surface, Naruto was thinking back to the final days of the trouble times, the fight with Sasuke, his entering the sage levels, even all the deaths the village had to undergo, even all the trouble everyone had to surface as they had to rebuild the village, and to see that ten years had passed, that he himself was looking back at everything bored out of his mind... Tsunade was even nice enough to give him a office in the Hokage tower to get a job to curb his prank streak and give him something productive to do. But his problem was the boredom that set in from a nation wide peace... The hardest job he had was nothing more than a basic breaking and entering leading to a theft of family heirlooms but nothing that would actually require a challenge, or even his attention to draw towards a real case. Naruto slides his feet off his desk, loosens his tie and walks down the hallway towards his room, Hinata had gotten home late and was passed out, he was just glad to see that she was okay... she looked worried but was to tired to talk about it so Naruto just let her rest. And sure enough as he opened the door she started to stir, he could see that she had changed into some lilac silk pajamas he had bought for her, she looked like a huge rectangle in the loose silk pj's as she usually liked to look and feel. But she was stretching and started to look around as she realized where she really was.

"Hey sleepy head, are you feeling okay? You came in kinda late and you really seemed out of it. How was your girls night out?" Naruto looked over her as she closed her eyes, the night flashing through her mind, she looked back up at Naruto and he could just see the trouble...

"Well the night out went great, we went out to the new wine shoppe, we even got to go to your favorite ramen place, and then we went out to the old academy for memories sake told a few jokes, it was great and then we dropped off TenTen and then Ino..." She tapered off

"What were you saying about Ino? Well what about her? Come on finish your story, please..." Naruto pushed as she fell back into her old fading off habit, she was stopping again meaning something was on her mind. And he hoped to coax her from her old habits. "Hey hun are you okay? Look you have been a lot better about telling me things now please communicate with me, tell me whats up?" Hinata seemed to blush at this as she looked back at Naruto, she reached up and kisses him on the cheek before taking her standard deep breath.

"Well we went to drop off Ino and found that her entire house had burnt down, the shop, her house, the entire thing... Normally not a problem what with her family being a prominent clan and money being big... But her parents, everyone was caught in the flame, it killed everyone she was lucky to get out when she did because the fire squad said it wasn't but minutes after she said she left. So we don't know if it was a good thing or not, however she is coming by today to talk to you. Your welcome for suggesting you however it was out of ANBU hands..." Hinata was kinda blushing and everything was starting to look better in her, Naruto still noticed that something just did not add up with her. But he still gave her the big hug she was so accustomed to now, and went back to his office, thoughts ran through his mind but he was glad that he finally had something to do. But in the back of his head he knew that Ino was going to come in later, and he had free time he was just going to go visit the fire location and see what was what, maybe he could shed more light on this unfortunate event, maybe even find out exactly what had started the fire,... but it was unknown even to the tracker ninjas.

[Hinata chan, will be back in a while...if Ino beats me back here hold her here I should not be that long. Love Naruto] And he picked up his suit coat and fedora before hitting the door and out the tower. It had been awhile since Naruto used any kind of ninja travel and jumping from building to building in his kill me orange business suit felt good, brought back some old memories of his childhood jumping and running around and all the horrid pranks he would pull, it was nothing short of amazing. But it hardly took 2 minutes before he jumped down to the road and was standing in what was the lot that once held the most beautiful flower shop in all the hidden leaf. And it was burnt down, there was nothing here that would suggest foul play expect that two upper level ninjas who had actual battle and public experience got caught off guard in a fire and died from it. Any trained ninja would have noticed from a fire, and would have gotten out quickly, and even then the fire would have been controlled. Why was this different? Naruto started to walk around the lot, kicking over pieces of building and broken down walls, something caught his eye it, glints of red, or even... as he turned to look closer he moved a section of support beam and noticed plates, and a section of armor, it looked familiar. Naruto picked it up, flipped it over and over again checking the curves and the material, he sealed the pieces in a sealing scroll and pocketed it; he continued his search as he moved around the building and started looking for more evidence... there was signs of the starting fire on the floor below what would be the flower shop... and it seemed to spread and grow from there just as a normal fire, something sparks the dry flowers catch and fire breaks out, but why wouldn't the heat catch anyone's attention? Also the wood wasn't spreading upwards it looked like it was focused on one area, the fire was also focused right under Ino's room. It looked like the house closed in on this one focus point, weird.

Naruto found himself back at the office with three things, nothing catchy that gives him a giant case, but enough to point towards some form of foul play whether it is towards murder or just to get her attention, it was something foul. He looked down at his sealed evidence... first the piece of armor, then the burn pattern on the floor... and then finally from the fallout of the house that it wasn't a spread fire made naturally that it was all refined towards a focused subject location. But he had to wait to talk to Ino before he can really decide what this was. And just like a universal clock the world threw him a freebee. There was a knock on the door, the figure on the other side was ino it had to be, no one else wore that long of a hairstyle, and even through the tinted window he could make out the purple outfit...

"Naruto are you there? I know you were already there today but can we talk?" Ino's voice sounded shaky, but then again she would have to be mentally skewed to not be at least a little shaken after the death of her mom and dad, and the loss of her home and shop. But something in his voice didn't sound quite right, like she was more nervous than upset, scared and not depressed. Could be construed as a good thing that the victim isn't depressed and crying, but this isn't even sadness for such a traumatic experience.

"Yeah Ino I'm here, please come in and have a seat." And just as he could see in the window she was wearing her usual fishnets, and purple outfit, only altered by the amount of cleavage she had decided to show in her growing age. Again not a bad thing but he was taken. "So Ino what can you tell me about last night, specificly anything you might have seen when you got home... and this is important I want you to tell me anything you know before I head back over there." Naruto looks back on the tone of voice and he might have come off a bit pushy, but it didnt matter this issue was high stress on the entire village so urgency was in a way required.

"Well after Hinata, Sakura, and I got back from our night out I, I mean I could see the smoke from even across the bridge but I thought mom was just running the incinerator again, it wasnt until I got to the actual shop that I noticed it was burnt down. The smell was horrible like torched wood and melting flesh. With a fragrant smell of the pollen the had not yet burnt up in the air,


End file.
